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A Quick Guide to Quick Guides to MOOspace (Nov. 4, 1997)

Intro:

For a really good overview of MOOspace, visit Jeff Galin's MOO Central. at
http://www.pitt.edu/~jrgst7/MOOcentral.html   It is oriented toward teachers (my bias is showing) but it gives an excellent overview of terms, techniques, software, and places to visit.

To get to any moo, use Telnet.  You can do this from a web browser.  In the location bar where you would normally type http://  plus a web address, type telnet:// plus a MOO address.  For instance, to get to Diversity University (as very user-friendly place to start), click on the location window of your browser and type

telnet://moo.du.org:8888

The colons after "telnet" and before "8888" are both important.  There are no spaces in the address.

If your version of Netscape doesn't support telnet, you can either upgrade or use the plain old telnet program.  Instructions for doing so from the Microlab are here.

Telnet makes a rather poor MOO client, though, so if you are going to do any more than just drop in, see http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/~tari/connections/client-info.html for a free MUD/MOO client.

Diversity University is a good place to start because it is oriented to students and therefore features lots of help and a welcoming environment.  No need to fear being scorned as a newbie here! Start by typing CONNECT GUEST, then OUT to get to the Orientation Centre.  You will be provided with tutorials, help screens and all sorts of useful stuff.

Another good newbie site is Connections (telnet://connections.moo.mud.org:3333)  Check out their help page at http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/~tari/connections/guest-help.html.  Also have a look at the main Netoric project page at http://bsuvc.bsu.edu/~00gjsiering/netoric/netoric.html.

MOO Central (above) also provides addresses for a number of scoial MOOs such as LambdaMoo (telnet://lambda.moo.mud.org:8888) that are not as oriented to a teacher/student relationship.

Once you are connected:

You will see an opening screen welcoming you to the MOO.  Almost all MOOs have a set of help commands; if all else fails, type "help" and see what happens.

Normally you will see instructions on how to connect as a guest (such as Connect Guest) and how to request your own permanent character (a must if you want to have more fun.)

If you connect as a guest, you will be able to move your character in a a number of directions shown on the opening screen/  For instance, when you connect to MediaMOO you will see:

If you type "out," you will find yourself in The E&L garden.

To talk to other characters, preface your remark with a quotation mark.  If your character is "Red_Guest" and you type

everyone else will see To make your character perform an action, preface it with a colon.  If you type everyone else will see I'll leave you to explore help pages for all of the many other things you can do.   Be sure to read at least a few of these to get the feel of the culture and manners of the neighbourhood before rattling around.

Screen Problems:

Two of the most common problems are:

1.  Material scrolls off your screen before you can read it all.  Issue the command @pagelength 25 to set the maximum pagelength to 25.  Type @more to see the next 25 lines.

2.  You can't see what you're typing.  Look for a menu at the top of your window that says "Terminal" or something of the sort.  Open it, select "preferences" or "options," and see if you can figure out how to turn local echo on.  This will vary a bit with software.

Have fun and good luck.